


i love you, and i’m not sorry

by hi_im_robin



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, girls love girls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:40:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23517061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_im_robin/pseuds/hi_im_robin
Summary: > I transferred my gaze from being glued to the paper in my hands to staring absentmindedly around the cabin. The bag of pens, once the only thing on my mind, now laid forgotten at my feet as my mind started doing somersaults again. The girl from the line, the one that had sent my mind reeling the moment I laid eyes on her, had just entered the cabin. <
Relationships: chloexanna





	1. the line

**Author's Note:**

> likely I won’t update sorry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anna always faces summer camp alone, but... what if this time... she doesn’t have to?

"Come on, there's lots of cute boys there."  
Today marked the three month anniversary of me saying that, on a Tuesday when I had grown so desperate to not be lonely that my dizzy daydreams robbed my mind of every last trace of any savviness that it had ever owned. I was deprived of all the hope I'd wasted away in the past few years, sending out invitations to people that never accepted. I wish I could say that this was the year that I wouldn't walk through heavy metal doors alone, but it wasn't. This year was exactly the same as it always was. Lonely.  
I always noticed how everything moves very fast when you're riding in a car. How the whole world slips by in a blur while you're sitting on the other side of the glass and not moving at all. It reminded me of when Evan Hansen sings about waving through a window. Of course, there's always the argument that maybe I've got it twisted and I'm just going so fast that I can't see the road anymore. Either way, I zoned back into reality and noticed my phone buzz for the tenth time that second. I pressed my check against the window and let out a sigh. The warm glass didn't untangle the knot in my throat. The words in my hands drug me back to realities that I believed to be carved in stone. Thoughts that ran a mile a minute in my head had broken the "off" switch such a long time ago that I often wondered if the "off" switch had ever even worked at all. The number of words that had escaped my mouth in the past hour and a half could all be counted on one hand with fingers to spare because nervousness never settled well with the butterfly pets that lived in my stomach.   
I felt the car begin to shake underneath me when we hit the gravel road. I never understood how one driveway could tangle up all my nerves up into a knot in summer but wash me over in a wave of delight in fall. I should really be better at controlling my emotions by now.  
"We're here!" Announced my mom.  
That was the first phrase to puncture the silence, like a knife to a balloon. This was not new information to me. I knew we had arrived, for I had done nothing but drag out the minutes leading up to now for the past few days.   
"Hey, you're gonna make lots of friends and before you know it you're not even gonna want to leave."  
I suppose I could have listened to my dad; after all he was only trying to encourage me, but he'd said the same thing for the past eleven years and it never actually happened.   
"Yeah, ok." I replied, my words getting lost in the sound of the car door closing.   
I journeyed across the gravel parking lot until I stood at the entrance of the new lodge. It loomed above me like David stood before Goliath. I pushed the door open, cringing at the scream of metal on metal that leapt out from it. I felt my hair blow back out of my face from a sudden gust of air that escaped from the air conditioned room that was almost caverness. Teenagers and parents were lined up along the perimeter of the room, stretching from the door to the dining hall and all the way across the room to the door I had just entered from. Reading every face and feeling would've been like reading a million different books. In essence, the line was a library. Some faces were painted with lighthearted smiles as they joked around with their friends, the eyebrows of parents furrowed as they developed conversations about football, childhood and everything in between, while others stayed very quiet and kept to themselves. I could've spent the entire day perusing the line like the wallflower I am and can be from time to time.   
My place in the line was a few steps in front of where I had entered from. My eyes darted around the line to all the familiar faces from camps past and those I had yet to meet. None in particular sparked my interest.   
This was summer camp. Week long, sleepaway, no phone, and an hour and a half away from home summer camp. Being an hour and a half away from home meant that none of my friends lived in the area and I'd be spending the next day and a half walking into established relationships of school friends, siblings, cousins, and more. So, just like every year before, I spent my time in the line scanning the room for all the people I know wouldn't be there.   
My parents had found someone to talk to in front of us in the line. It was the parents of a girl with long strawberry blonde hair that I recognized from last year. I was too preoccupied with making sure I'd said all my goodbyes to engage in small talk. I had finally opened my phone to all the messages I'd received in the car only a few moments earlier. My best friend Harper kept promising she'd write as I scribbled her address onto my hand. Violet's address was written on my other hand in blue ink from when I'd discovered she was attending her sleepaway camp this week as well. I really thought I'd had Harper when I'd said "cute boys" back in April, but plans just sort of fell though like they always do.   
Overall, despite my behaviour, I knew I would have fun in the long run. It was just that getting there was always very hard. I'm always a nervous wreck the days leading up to camp. I don't know why, but the moment it's mentioned I just get this sinking feeling inside me that won't go away no matter how hard I try, and it doesn't fully dissipate until the third day of camp. Maybe it's because on day three I've found the friend group I'll be sticking with and I've settled into the routine. No matter the reason, it's still pretty rotten while it lasts.  
I glanced up from my phone for a moment and looked back into the room. I'd been watching several people that resembled classmates and old friends for a while now, but I never did find the lifeline I was searching for. My dad talked about college in the white noise behind my thoughts, so I just went back to meaninglessly scrolling through Instagram and posting things like "full disclosure, I'm off the grid this week, summer camp" on my close friends story. I didn't really care about any of it; the posts I mean. Infact, I was sort of looking forward to getting away from it all. I would miss my lazy schedule though.   
I had just reached a post where the big brown eyes of a random kitten I followed on Instagram stared up at me when the doors whined again. The sound of screaming metal interrupted my zoo of thoughts and drew my head away from my phone. I'm really a very curious person by nature, so when a sliver of light poured from the doorway I just had to see who was at the door. I felt a little silly to still be watching that door so intensely; I'd been watching it for what felt like hours by then. However, my curiosity remained to trump all other feelings when I felt the warm gust of summer air wash away by air conditioning once more. Much to my dismay, heads blocked my view and I couldn't see who it was. I was standing by the merch table now which put me halfway to being checked in and the end of the line had migrated back to the door I'd entered from. I peered around in annoyance that all the boys here were so tall and that I was so short because I still couldn't see. Finally the boy behind me in line, Ryan I think his name was, moved and I had a clear view to the newest addition to the line.   
My breath halted in my throat. My hands began to fidget all over again and all at once every single worry that had previously occupied my mind was cut short. Standing at the end of the line looking as lost as ever was a girl with bright purple hair. This girl was basically my celebrity crush. Technically she was a celebrity by definition because a lot of people did know who she was, but it was more in a smaller scale sort of way. It sounds a bit cheesy, but she was an up and coming singer who was making her way up on YouTube. I really liked her voice and felt like I connected with her songs. I was over the moon. I probably stared a little longer than I should have, but the daze that settled in me felt so unreal that I had to make sure I wasn't just imagining things (and I wasn't). It probably sounds silly, but I really did like her.  
My first instinct was to tell my best friends Harper and Violet. They were the only people in the entire universe I'd even mentioned this crush too. It might not sound like a big deal, but I had never told anyone I might possibly be into girls. This was the first time I'd ever really fallen for a girl, and I fell hard.   
My delirium was ripped away into reality when I realized it was my turn to check in. I was in the dining hall standing in front of a little foldable table covered in check in papers.  
"Oh, hey Anna." One of the two ladies sitting at the table said.  
"Hi." I replied with a sheepish smile.   
"Are you excited for senior high?" She asked.  
Her name was Audrey and she had been my counselor back when I was six. I didn't remember her very well but my parents knew her. My dad had been a counselor back in the day and my older sister had gone to camp here as well, so a lot of people knew me.   
"Yeah." I replied honestly. I was actually quite excited even though I was also nervous.  
"Let's see, have you been to senior high before?"  
"Yeah, I went last year cause I was busy during junior high."  
"Well, you're gonna have a lot of fun this week." She told me smiling.  
She brushed a stray blonde hair out of her face and handed me my schedule and the cabin list. I knew the girl probably wouldn't be in my cabin but, like a little kid ties a balloon to a lightweight object to keep it grounded, I hoped my dreams wouldn't float away. I peered down at the green paper reluctantly, my eyes scanning first for my own name. I was in girls 2 just like the year before last. My counselor was someone named Brooklyn. I guess I sort of remembered her being a CA a few years back. I tried to hold back for a moment and bask in that daydream, but my patience ran so thin that I couldn't even wait a second longer to find out what cabin she would be in. I ran my finger over every cabin but mine, but her name was nowhere to be found. I began to question myself all over again and sank into all my doubts until I found her name. It was directly under mine in girls 2. My daze returned in a thick fog. How could I be so lucky? Not only was I going to be at no phone, sleepaway, seven day summer camp with the one person I never even thought I would meet, but I was going to be in her cabin! This was definitely, without a doubt, going to be a summer to remember.  
I got my camp T-shirt, reunited with my staff friend Tegan, and finished getting checked in. The camp shirts this year were available in light blue or grey (I chose grey) and had the camp logo from the 80s on the front. Tegan was excited to see me as much as I was to see her. She usually ran all of the crafts stuff so I knew I would be spending a lot of time in the craft hut again this year. I got checked for lice (which I was clear of) by another staff member I knew and then departed the new lodge. Next up on my "camp to-do list" was to go to my cabin, meet my counselor, and move in. Adrenaline rushed through me as I rode in the car down to my cabin. I examined my new home for the next week from the window. There were lots of trees. I couldn't sit still in the backseat. My mind was in a flurry of questions like "will she like me?" "will we be friends?" "will she pick the bed next to mine?". It bothered me how bent out of shape I was just because of one person I'd never even met before. I was setting myself up for disaster and all of the "what if's" clouding my vision certainly didn't help. I decided that all the answers to my stupid questions would be "no". Surely this was too good to be true and the mere fact that she was here and in my cabin would be the only parts of this whole thing that would go my way. "Stop while I'm ahead." That's what I told myself.


	2. the cabin

My stomach plummeted the moment the screen door shut behind my parents. I was on my own now.   
"The pool's open if you want to hang out over there." Brooklyn called from the doorway.   
"Ok." I replied "I think I'm just gonna hang out here for now."   
A moment passed by before I said "I like your music by the way" as an afterthought.  
Her lips lifted up into a smile as she turned on her heel and returned to the porch, her long brown ponytail flowing behind her.   
For a moment all I did was sit on my bed. My blanket was soft against my fingertips but I wanted to busy my hands with something. I figured if I did something then I could put my mind at ease. I didn't want to go to the pool for many reasons; one was that I didn't like the feeling of dried chlorine on my skin all day and another was that I didn't know anyone I could stick with. I get overwhelmed by large groups of people when I'm alone in them.   
I reached down into one of my drawers and let my hand pick what I was going to do. I felt around all my books, notebooks, pens, cards, and many other things that occupied the container until I landed on a leathery surface. I pulled it out of the drawer and fished a pencil out with it. I plopped the black sketchbook down on my bed and examined it for a moment. The pages sent a wave of comfort through me as I felt my skin glide against the paper. I flipped through until I found a clean page. It stared up at me menacingly, begging me to ruin it's pearly white finish with indents and eraser marks. I couldn't decide what I was going to draw but the paper begged and whined, so I set my pencil against the paper and began to create lines. Meaningless lines that meant absolutely nothing. One line would be straight and another would be curved. I hadn't even noticed the clock clock tick away two minutes when my lines started forming into a sketch.  
Ocean Eyes continued to swim through my ears. It danced in the air and through the static of Brooklyn's speaker, but it came to a halt in my brain when the voices outside became louder. Brooklyn's conversation turned from counselors to what I assumed to be a new camper. I hadn't met anyone in my cabin yet. Each cabin contained ten beds which meant nine campers and a counselor. Three of the beds, aside from my own and Brooklyn's, had already been taken. Both of the left corner beds were occupied along with the bed nearest to the right bathroom door. I assumed all of those girls had gone up to the pool.   
My hand drifted back down to my sketch. My ears half listened to the muffled conversation outside and half to the music. My thoughts weaved through sounds around me and down into the pencil-lead.   
The screen door opened letting in another gust of heat. I would've looked up, but I had just decided a few seconds before that I absolutely needed a light blue pen before I could continue my drawing. I reached back down into the drawer and pulled out a bag filled to the brim with different colored pens. My fingers shoved between the contents of the ziplock as I searched through it, only stopping when I had what I wanted in my grip.   
The floors creaked under the weight of footsteps that I had just now come to notice. My hand flew up to tend a stray hair. It was one of those pesky things that had wandered from behind my ear to my right eye when I was drawing. I brushed it out of my face and tucked behind my ear. I was quickly fading out of the world of ink and lead that laid in my lap.   
I transferred my gaze from being glued to the paper in my hands to staring absentmindedly around the cabin. The bag of pens, once the only thing on my mind, now laid forgotten at my feet as my mind started doing somersaults again. The girl from the line, the one that had sent my mind reeling the moment I laid eyes on her, had just entered the cabin. Accompanying her was a man I didn't recognize. I was still so dazed by the fact she was even there that I failed to notice any details about him. One of her hands was busy holding the handle of a rolling suitcase while the other held her camp schedule and cabin list. Her nails were adorned by polish that had long since began to chip and her eyes darted around as she observed the room. She was quiet and so was I. I didn't think she'd noticed me yet, at least not directly, so I decided it would be in my best interest to remain in the background and mind my own business for the time being. I would have plenty of time to talk to her later. Besides, I knew that if I was to say anything at that moment, it would most likely be something stupid that I'd later regret.


End file.
